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VIRGINIA 



VIRGINIA 



BY 
EDWIN ANDERSON ALDERMAN 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
MCMXVI 






Copyright, 1916, by 
EDWIN A. ALDERMAN 



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AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN RE- 
SPONSE TO THE TOAST "VIRGINIA," 
AT THE BANQUET GIVEN BY THE 
CITIZENS OF PETERSBURG, VIRGINIA, 
TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED 
STATES AND THE GOVERNOR OF 
PENNSYLVANIA, ON MAY 19, 1909. 



VIRGINIA 

WHENEVER men join in tribute 
to other men who were willing to 
sacrifice themselves for a conception of 
public duty, the whole human mass moves 
forward in the way of brotherhood. One 
may, with entire restraint, call this day, 
which we have spent in this historic city, 
a day of dignity and high feeling. Even 
if the Chief-Magistrate of the Republic 
had not honored it by his kindly pres- 
ence, its own memories, sincerities, and 
fraternities would suffice to set it apart 
for remembrance and respect. Pennsyl- 
vania and Virginia are tied together by 
many unbreakable bonds of common 
ancestry, common glory, and common 
tragedy. Staunton and Pittsburg were 
once in the same county in the far-ojBF 

[ 1 ] 



days when Virginia was so inclusive a 
term as to cover most of the country. 
Valley Forge and Germantown loom 
back of Gettysburg. Back of civil strife 
may be seen the brotherly forms of 
Washington and Franklin, and Independ- 
ence Hall in Philadelphia and Thomas 
Jefferson of Virginia are forever united 
in the thought of the world. Among 
the men who charged with such wild 
valor at Gettysburg, and the men who 
stood with such granite firmness, were 
the same German and Scotch-Irish breeds 
who had peopled the Appalachians and 
had made the Shenandoah Valley the 
cradle of American democracy. Save 
perhaps at Dunbar and Naseby field, 
so large a proportion of brothers in blood 
of our race had never before met in 
shock of battle. It is fortunate for a 
[3] 



republic like ours that great States like 
Pennsylvania and Virginia can turn 
from contemplation of their differences 
to warm their souls at the fire of common 
glories, for in that warmth such gross 
dross as hate and unforgiveness are con- 
sumed and pass away. 

The State of North CaroUna was my 
birthplace. I am profoundly grateful 
for the privilege of birth among that 
brave, self-reliant, and progressive people 
whose virtues are such as to guarantee 
to my mind that a democracy such as 
theirs will be the final form of govern- 
ment. My birth State taught me faith 
in men and confidence in the ultimate 
rectitude of public impulse, and I have 
for that State and that people the 
enduring love which a son should 
bear to a proud and generous mother. 
[5] 



Virginia is now my home, and I have 
learned to love her and her people as 
all must who taste the quality of Vir- 
ginia life. What strength I have is 
spent in the service of Virginia, and I 
rejoice in the opportunity of rendering, 
in this inspiring presence, that dis- 
criminating praise of her which all 
Americans owe, and which both love 
and reverence for her impel me to utter. 
We of the South are sometimes laughed 
at gently for our sensitiveness to local 
things and our pride of State. Let us 
not be laughed out of this sentiment. 
I am an American, and feel utterly at 
home in this republic of my fathers, to 
which I owe and give as supreme af- 
fection and allegiance as if these bullets 
had never sped across the fields of civil 
strife. There is a weak and evil sec- 
[7] 



tionalism which distrusts all who do 
not live in its particular region. This 
sinister sectionalism reaches a climax 
of folly and hurtfulness when it exalts 
complaisancy and seK-satisfaction above 
open-mindedness and constant analysis. 
There is, as well, a fruitful and noble 
sectionalism which simply exalts love of 
home, and interest and affection for one's 
neighbors. Out of this fruitful sectional- 
ism have come the great unselfishnesses, 
the great heroisms, the great sacrifices, 
the great men of the world. Indeed, the 
story of America is merely the story 
of great sections developing individual 
characteristics under the pressure of social 
and economic conditions, and then, by 
the sheer strength of local pride, react- 
ing upon other sections and thus shap- 
ing into unity that complex result which 
f 9 1 



we call national character. The great 
literatures of the race have been the 
work of those who loved their home 
lands, and saw so deeply into the mean- 
ing of life just about them, that they 
uttered their experiences in forms of 
such simple beauty and truth as to touch 
the universal heart, and so attained 
cosmopolitanism — and, sometimes, im- 
mortality. Burns upturned the modest 
violet in rude Scottish earth, but its 
fate and its fragrance have filled the 
world. One cannot imagine Homer and 
the great Greeks travelling abroad for 
inspiration. It is not strange to our 
quieter thought that England was the 
crystal drop in which Shakespeare mir- 
rored the world's experience, and Christ 
needed only the sights and sounds of 
Judean by-ways to furnish him with 
[ 11 1 



the material for the pictures which, 
hanging forever in our minds, excel all 
others in wisdom and beauty. I speak 
in no narrow parochial spirit, therefore, 
when I say that Virginia seems to me 
the most distinguished, the most en- 
gaging, the most unselfish, and, in a 
spiritual sense, the most vital of Amer- 
ican Commonwealths. 

Perhaps the supreme distinction of 
all life is motherhood. No one can deny 
to Virginia the authority that springs 
from the motherhood of this Republic. 
Our civilization began on her water- 
courses, and our democracy was cradled 
in her mountain valleys. The story of 
John Smith and the arrival of the slave 
ship stamp her dimmest beginnings with 
a stamp of romance and tragedy. The 
Mayflower is an epic ship sailing west- 
[ 13] 



ward on an unknown sea, bringing to 
these shores a breed of men who bore 
with them the town meeting, the public 
school, an appreciation of the value of 
the common man, and an indomitable 
capacity. Institutions and ideas were 
in their right hand, and in their left 
hand a wilfulness, a foresight, and a 
common sense as injflexible as granite. 
They, too, builded a mighty Common- 
wealth which became the mother of 
States. No less epic are the ships that 
bore to Tidewater Virginia men whose 
souls were wrought in the same revolu- 
tionary fire in the old home land. It is 
very silly to think of Virginia as spring- 
ing from the loins of the butterflies of 
British aristocracy. These men, too, 
knew what it meant to die for a cause, 
and their cpnception of political liberty 
[ 15 ] 



was just as clear and their genius for 
political expression perhaps a little 
clearer than that of the voyagers on 
the Mayflower. In following their dif- 
fering paths of development these two 
prolific sections have greatly misunder- 
stood each other. But in all their gen- 
erations of dissension I see a certain 
quality of curiosity and interest, of sym- 
pathy and regret, akin to that which 
shows in a divided family, or which 
shines for us so strikingly in that gentlest 
and most singular of all historic recon- 
ciliations, when John Adams and Thomas 
Jefferson, after a lifetime of misunder- 
standing, had power given to their dying 
eyes to behold each other, face to face, 
in lineaments of essential grandeur and 
dignity. 

Certainly, there are no two peoples 
[ 17 1 



in the world who quietly enjoy so much 
each other's commendation, or wince 
so smartly under each other's disap- 
proval. When a New Englander has 
the greatness of soul to perceive the 
royal beauty of the character of Lee, 
or when a man like Lamar beholds and 
utters sublime words of understanding 
of the soul of a man like Sumner, it is 
a fine thing to note the glow of good 
feeling that pervades the two regions. 

Out of Virginia's life came our supreme 
national hero and a group of resource- 
ful men without whose influence it is 
difficult to see how the nation could 
ever have been born. They were able 
to achieve, besides, a manly personal 
charm, a grand manner, a catholic 
lovableness, the simplicity that belongs 
to a shepherd with the pride that be- 
[ 19 1 



longs to a king, that established them 
forever in the affections of men. How 
cheapened of distinction and impover- 
ished of dignity would be our national 
Ufe if it were bereft of the glorified com- 
mon sense of George Washington, the 
human sympathy and cosmopolitanism 
of Thomas Jefferson, the penetrating 
analysis of John Marshall, the patient 
wisdom of James Madison, and the in- 
stinct for duty and the calm forbearance 
and lofty wisdom of Robert E. Lee, who 
long generations afterwards flowered into 
the rose of his stately and tolerant man- 
hood, very like the old stock, only 
gentler and more able, through virtue 
and suffering, to evoke the love of mil- 
lions! Two such men as Washington 
and Lee in one century give to Tide- 
water Virginia the same sort of distinc- 
[21 ] 



tion which Pericles and Leonidas give 
to the Grecian Archipelago, for, after 
all, it is the output of great men that 
makes fame and friends for nations. 
Mr. Choate once told the English that 
the chiefest industry of America was 
education : so I may say that the chiefest 
contribution of Virginia to American 
life has been men, great governmental 
ideas, and a great spirit. If a stranger 
to American institutions should inquire 
who founded this republic, who shaped 
its structures for the ages, and who 
breathed into it the spirit that has en- 
abled it to become the most venerable 
and impressive of all republics, a truth- 
ful answer, whoever it might exclude, 
would certainly include the names of 
Patrick Henry, George Washington, 
Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, 
[ 23 ] 



James Madison, John Marshall, James 
Monroe, George Mason, and many more 
less known to world-fame but a part 
of the amazing outburst of intellectual 
energy that came out of this Common- 
wealth to set the framework of our 
great popular experiment in forms of 
imperishable strength and beauty. 

From Virginia's life, too, arose the 
genius that clothed in noble phrase the 
reasons for revolution; that guided 
victoriously the legions of war; that 
bore foremost initiative in shaping the 
Constitution; that interpreted its spirit; 
that widened colonial vision from pro- 
vincialism to empire; and that fixed 
faith in average humanity as the phi- 
losophy of a new civilization. But it 
is as a land of the spirit that Virginia 
seems most majestic to me and most 
[ 25 1 



moving to any generous soul. Mere 
lists of measures traceable to her soil, or 
mere lists of great men who adorn her 
annals, do not convey adequately her mes- 
sage to this upward-striving democracy. 
That message is best conveyed by her 
spirit and that spirit is best summed 
up in three words — unselfishness, devo- 
tion to duty, and love of home. Can 
any message be more needed by our 
over-nourished, over-speciahzed, nervous 
society, suffering, it seems to me, from 
the very excesses of energy and achieve- 
ment? 

When, in the interests of stability and 
union, it seemed necessary to surrender 
an imperial domain to the young gov- 
ernment for which she had sacrificed 
so much, Virginia made that surrender 
without reservation, without haggling 
[ 27 1 



or bargaining, and with a graciousness 
and dignity that add a certain splendor 
to that critical, suspicious, and unlovely 
period in our progress toward national- 
ity. The States of Ohio, Indiana, Mich- 
igan, Wisconsin, Illinois were carved 
out of that gift. One of them, at least, 
Ohio, has reached the point of con- 
testing with her ancient mother the 
authority of being the mother of Presi- 
dents. Virginia can bear her success 
in this high emulation with fortitude, 
for she feels that Ohio's sons, including 
our distinguished guest to-day, the hon- 
ored and beloved President of a reunited 
country, are the results of Virginia's 
generosity and partake of Virginia's 
spirit. Not content with this large gift 
of empire, like a thoughtful mother, 
Virginia assumed the task of providing 
[ 29 ] 



for the guidance of the future popula- 
tions of her surrendered domain, the 
genius of her great philosopher and 
friend of men, Jefferson, guiding her 
pen, and in the Ordinance of 1787 
practically created a new "magna 
charta" which gave to that community 
the benefits of enhghtened freedom in 
a larger way than had ever before been 
accorded to pioneers in new lands. I 
confess that there is no more painful 
circumstance to me in our history than 
the fact that this gracious and generous 
Commonwealth was one day to have 
what was left of its modest territory 
sundered and violated as a penalty for 
its devotion to an ideal of public duty. 

It was reserved, however, for the Civil 
War and its consequences to test to the 
uttermost the spirit of Virginia and to 
[31 ] 



prove that spirit pure gold. Do not 
fancy that I have the purpose to analyze 
the causes of this war, or to kindle from 
their ashes the fires that once burned 
so fiercely here and elsewhere through 
the land. The war between the States 
was a brothers' war, brought on, as our 
human nature is constituted, by the 
operation of economic forces, the clash- 
ing of inherited feelings, the impact of 
differing notions about the meaning of 
liberty woven by no will of either sec- 
tion into the very fabric of the peo- 
ple's life. Thus fate-driven, the sections 
came to war embodying in stern antag- 
onism two majestic ideas — the idea of 
local self-government and the idea of 
union. No war in human history was 
a sincerer conflict than this war. It 
was not a war for conquest or glory. To 
[ 33 1 



call it rebellion is to speak ignorantly; 
to call it treason is to add viciousness 
to stupidity. It was a war of ideas, 
principles, political conceptions, and of 
loyalty to ancient ideals of English 
freedom. 

Virginia did not enter this war with 
a light heart. She loved the Union, for 
it was her child. Calmly, patiently, 
sadly, without haste or passion, save a 
certain anguish of spirit, Virginia made 
her choice while all the world awaited 
breathlessly which way would fall her 
decision and which way her great au- 
thority. True to character, Virginia 
went the old path of sympathy, idealism, 
and unselfishness, and a certain grand 
accounting of honor more than life and 
loyalty more than gold. With every- 
thing to lose and nothing to gain ma- 
[ 35 1 



terially by her decision, she yet made 
it proudly, because to her mind the 
oldest and noblest conception of free- 
dom was local self-government, and to 
her heart, as one might expect from a 
mother of States, came the appeal of 
her children on the Gulf plains and the 
Atlantic Seaboard — lands populated by 
her sons, and looking to her for guid- 
ance and leadership in the troubled seas 
sweeping about them. They were 
younger Virginias crying to the mother 
for help in an hour of doubt and peril. 
These younger Virginias in the hot 
blood of youth and pride of growth had 
gone beyond the old mother in a tragic 
and supreme adventure. Now they 
were needing her ancient supremacy 
and her maternal counsel. No such 
compelling tide of sympathy and love 
[ 37] 



and responsibility joined with a clear 
perception of constitutional justice ever 
before swept a great State to a supreme 
decision. Virginia, therefore, the builder 
of States and lover of peace, became the 
battlefield of a mighty struggle, and 
entered upon the course that caused 
her to experience a discipline of war 
and its consequences unknown to any 
other American community. Beleaguered 
cities, devastated valleys, ruined fields, 
precious life wasted, and all the land 
red like blood — this was the allotment 
of fate to Virginia. It is no coincidence 
that York town and Appomattox, our 
mightiest American happenings, fell in 
Virginia. They fell there because Vir- 
ginia was the root of the matter in both 
of the great crises. 

To the material vision Virginia seemed 
[ 39 ] 



ruined indeed when the storm had 
passed, but now we know that it was 
not so. She had suffered more than 
any country save Poland, and Poland 
ceased to exist. There was poverty in 
Virginia and throughout the South, but 
it begot strength; there was wounded 
pride, but it begot in big hearts a noble 
humihty; there was lack of energy in 
law and order in society, but it begot 
self-reUance and constructiveness : and 
somehow the love of millions hghtened 
the gloom of the war-smitten land. By 
the might of great sacrifice, and great 
achievement, and great fortitude, Vir- 
ginia achieved a spiritual authority over 
the hearts of Americans that she could 
not have won by the most astonishing 
material success. The golden peace in 
which the old State had been lapped for 
[ 41 1 



a generation had given no successors 
to the great dynasty of the past. The 
age of war and economic ruin, through 
the immortal careers of Lee, Jackson, 
Johnston, Stuart, and a goodly host of 
others, established a new dynasty of 
virtue and genius. The State became 
the State of memories to the old who 
had traversed its fields and red hills 
in the pride of youth and in the pomp 
of war, and it became a land of spiritual 
values to the young in the North and 
in the South who invested it with 
youth's generous ardor, with the con- 
secration that belongs to regions where 
great deeds have been done and great 
martyrdoms endured. 

Sympathetic and curious friends from 
other lands and States sometimes wonder 
why Virginia and the South give to 
\ 43 1 



General Lee a sort of intensity of love 
that they do not give even to Washing- 
ton. The reason is simple to those who 
know Virginia and Lee. Washington 
stands high, clean, spotless, like the 
shaft that commemorates his fame in 
the national capital, at the gateway of 
our republican history symbolizing the 
majesty of the era of origins and suc- 
cess. In a noble rhapsody about Na- 
poleon, Heinrich Heine declared that 
in his brain the eagles of inspiration 
built their eyries and in his heart hissed 
the serpents of ambition. Neither an 
eagle nor a serpent can ever figure in 
any description of the life and deeds of 
George Washington. He is simply a 
great illuminating allegory of unselfish- 
ness, self-control, and character, preach- 
ing in his life and in his grave utterances 
[ 45 ] 



the high doctrine that immeasurable 
fame and service may be rendered more 
enduringly by integrity and honor than 
by eloquence or superhuman gifts. Lee 
is a type and an embodiment of the 
best there is in all the sincere and ro- 
mantic history of the whole State. Its 
triumphs, its defeats, its joys, its suf- 
ferings, its rebirths, its pride, its pa- 
tience center in him. In that regnant 
figure of quiet strength and invincible 
rectitude and utter self-surrender may 
be discerned the complete drama of a 
great stock. As he stood at Arlington 
on that fateful day in 1861, smiting 
his hands in agony over a decision he 
needs must make, his agony was his 
people's agony: as he rode in triumph, 
by virtue of genius and valor, through 
the storm of victorious battle, his glory 
[ 47 1 



was their glory: as he stood forth amid 
all vicissitudes, ever unshaken of disas- 
ter or unspoiled by success, his fortitude 
was their fortitude: as the result of 
the Great Appeal was seen to rest 
at last upon his broad shoulders and 
his stout heart, his constancy was 
their constancy: as he stood at the 
end amid the shadows of defeat, an 
appeahng and unconquerable figure of 
virtue, of service, and of dignity, his 
dignity was their dignity: and some- 
how in the majesty of his manner and 
bearing, he reached back into the very 
roots of the proud past of the Old Domin- 
ion and connected its golden age and its 
ancient authorities, its long and happy 
peace with the trouble and wonder of 
the present. And now, in this hour 
of reunion and reconciliation, we know 
[ 49 1 



how, in those five quiet, laborious years 
at Lexington, he symbohzed the future 
for us as it has come to pass, and bade 
us hve in it, in hberal and lofty fashion, 
with hearts unspoiled by hate and eyes 
clear to see the needs of a new and a 
mightier day. Can you wonder at the 
measure of the love a people bear for 
such an embodiment of their best? 
Surely God was good and full of thought 
for a people to set in the forefront of 
their life a figure so large and ample 
and faultless! 

Gone from Virginia forever, let us 
hope, are the days of suffering and 
privation. Progress and peace rule her 
counsels and prosperity smiles upon 
her fields. Wealth is pouring into her 
coffers. Hope and capacity and genius 
for adjustment glow in the hearts and 
[ 51 1 



minds of her sons. Faith in all her 
people, whether they issue out of the 
old stock chastened by fortitude and 
woe, or out of the plain people who 
fought her battles for her, is now her 
chiefest passion and their education 
her chiefest concern. Secure in the 
dignity of a spiritual authority which 
she has earned, Virginia holds up her 
head among her sisters even more 
proudly than in the older time when 
she gave rulers and law to the young 
republic, for her pride is more completely 
that just pride which springs out of in- 
telligent devotion to all classes of her 
people. 

Enriched by the spirit of a gentle 
civilization flowing about her for gen- 
erations, protected by the love and 
veneration of thousands, and busy with 
[ 53 ] 



a multitude of schemes for her own 
social betterment, she will yet not be 
turned aside from the glory and priv- 
ilege of sharing in the inevitable re- 
making of the legal framework and the 
social spirit of the unrended country 
to which she gave birth and which she 
nourished in its helpless youth. There 
is a simple and holy feeling in her heart 
that the whole nation needs, in a pecul- 
iar sense, the strength and virtue which 
she has to contribute to its life, and 
that, in some grave hour of national 
peril yet to come, as such hours must 
come to every democracy, when the age 
of moral warfare shall succeed to the 
age of passionate gain-getting; when 
blind social forces have wrought some 
tangle of inequality and injustice; when 
the whole people shall seek for the 
[ 55 ] 



man of heart and faith — out of her 
uncorrupted, abounding life shall issue 
leadership and guidance for the great 
republic cradled on her soil, and now 
grown so great. 



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